"Naval Arms Race" mod overhaul. BETA v11.4 - for UAD v1.5.1.6

[daniel1212]

do you know the reason for this i did everything right 

 

[NathanKell]

On 6/18/2024 at 5:11 PM, SpardaSon21 said:

@NathanKell So, let me get this right.  The designer is literally just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks?  There's not a single bit of actual intelligent design to it?  And that of course doesn't take into account the bugs in it.  It sounds like its up to modders to make sure everything is tagged properly and you to fix the bugs in the designer code.

How much of this have you submitted to the devs via either bug reports or suggestions?

That's not entirely fair, no. There's a bunch of prioritization going on here, and also some recipes.

• It tries to choose the "best" (with some tunable random variation) gun calibers/mounts for the ship, rather than purely random guns. (But it doesn't take free tonnage into account, just a vague sense of how large the ship is)
• It prioritizes what zones of armor to add or remove, and prioritizes a bit between speed and armor and other stats
• It selects components by weighted-random (tunable in data), rather than pure random
• The part layouts, numbers, etc. chosen are recipe-based and tuned to the hulls (or groups of hulls). That said, parts that aren't guns or torpedoes are indeed chosen at random to fulfill these rules, rather than, say, picking the best tower or most efficient funnel. And the exact location to place a part, within the broad rectangle defined by the range parameters, is fully random.

The strongest and most damaging area of randomness IMO is that part selection and speed/armor determination and component determination are essentially decoupled, wherein the part selection can't even really take free tonnage into account because components haven't been selected yet.

On 6/18/2024 at 5:36 PM, DougToss said:

The text for using shared designs says something about the AI designer repeatedly failing and rerolling, so I suppose something like this could be inferred, but I assumed they were using templates by nation and year like Rule the Waves and then adding variables. That would make ship design dramatically more historically accurate (and similarly tactically and strategically useful). I would not have guessed at the level of randomness. 

It would, yes. Part of the problem though is that the freedom in the constructor is way higher than RTW, given that towers and guns need to be physically placed rather than either represented as director level or merely logically placed. There's also I think an argument to be made that this system favors replayability since I know when I was playing RTW (the original at least, haven't touched RTW3 yet) you got to recognize templates pretty quickly the more you played. And this goes doubly in terms of national "personality"--you can make an argument that it's fairly boring to assume Italian ships will be speed demons, British ships will be...a bit glass-cannony, and German ships will have armor for days.

On 6/18/2024 at 5:36 PM, DougToss said:

 

e: Because of course, ship design wasn't really random, you can see the design logic, and continuity in historical warship designs. Italian cruisers were not a random assortment of guns, superstructure and funnels on a hull, there was a clear design lineage, where arrangements that worked were retained, like the preference for double turrets on treaty cruisers. 

 

ee: Why not build around the core values ships were designed around? A power plant and hull to achieve a target battle speed/crushing range, armament (I grant you, armament was often designed independently and then fitted to ships, so if your nation had 4.7 inch guns, your destroyers and light cruisers had... 4.7 inch guns. Separately are guns designed for specific ships, like the BL 18 inch guns designed for Furious and then reused for monitors), and then protection against that armament at battle ranges (this would change over time obviously, and with deck armour growing important). RTW does that, and it's the simplest way to understand armour, all else being equal, something like, belt thickness equivalent to the calibre of the main armament, or that protects against the same at half of max range? 

Adding everything and then randomly deducting armour seems like it would lead to a lot of glass cannons?

That was and is my basic plan in rewriting the ship designer, yes. My thinking was to, once determining a type and hull, start by determining a speed as weighted by hull fineness, which leads to decisions about length/beam and beam/draught ratios, then picking components (the first of two passes of that) based on some broad strategies for the ship and its role, and then picking towers and funnels. Then, of the free tonnage remaining, determining what percentage to devote to armament and what percentage to protection and allocating that in useful ways, i.e. picking a main gun caliber that leads to a reasonable quantity of guns on the allowed armament tonnage.

On 6/18/2024 at 6:02 PM, SpardaSon21 said:

Which is exactly what people tend to see in-game, over-armed glass cannons with cramped crew quarters.  On the one hand I don't mind some randomness in design because nobody wants to see identical or near-identical ships, but the complete lack of any selectiveness frequently leads to designs that match the requirements but are effectively useless in combat.

Yes, this is the danger of randomness.

22 hours ago, XerMGGW-2 said:

Don't also forget that the designer tries so hard to have hulls be at their designed top speed, and sometimes even higher than that, which is often not possible to achieve and ends up wasting huge amounts of time for faster hulls scrapping designs over and over, per era.

There's also some bugs there re: knot<->m/s conversion. But yes, there's some hardcoded numbers there that just seem wrong for speed selection, and the fact that armor gets reduced before speed every time is...also not great.

[o Barão]

23 hours ago, DougToss said:

In my campaign, Germany just scrapped all of its ships but two while at war! It was 1894, the game had started in 1890, those ships were all perfectly serviceable. Every month the news ticker shows the major powers scrapping essentially their entire navies.

But the scrapping threshold in NAR is at 200k tons (x4 the vanilla value)

min_fleet_tonnage_for_scrap,200000,Min Fleet Tonnage needed to start scrapping ships,,,,,,,

I can't understand why you are seeing that. Money issues from Germany AI at the time?

[XerMGGW-2]

Always been curious how everyone handles scrapping threshold differently in their mods.
Vanilla has 50k tons.
NAR has 200k tons.
DIP has 500k tons.
HIP has 30k tons. Because I thought that it's instead how much ships per batch AI will want to scrap at minimum.

If only AI cared to properly sort pick the oldest ships instead, assuming it does this decision at completely random time...

[brothermunro]

9 hours ago, o Barão said:

But the scrapping threshold in NAR is at 200k tons (x4 the vanilla value)

min_fleet_tonnage_for_scrap,200000,Min Fleet Tonnage needed to start scrapping ships,,,,,,,

I can't understand why you are seeing that. Money issues from Germany AI at the time?

As far as I can tell if an AI country has more than the scrapping threshold it is allowed to scrap ships and this is only checked once per turn. So you can have a scenario where the ai nation has the scrap limit +1 tons of fleet then decides to scrap its entire navy all at once (though this seems rare as the AI doesn’t seem to like scrapping large numbers of ships at once)

[brothermunro]

9 hours ago, XerMGGW-2 said:

Always been curious how everyone handles scrapping threshold differently in their mods.
Vanilla has 50k tons.
NAR has 200k tons.
DIP has 500k tons.
HIP has 30k tons. Because I thought that it's instead how much ships per batch AI will want to scrap at minimum.

If only AI cared to properly sort pick the oldest ships instead, assuming it does this decision at completely random time...

The scrap limit checks the total fleet tonnage against the value you set in Params. If the fleet tonnage is larger than the scrap limit then the ai is allowed to scrap ships. So in vanilla if the AI has a fleet of 50,001 tons it can scrap ships, the game doesn’t seem to check in between each ship being scrapped it all happens at once. (So for example the ai could scrap 2 10,000 ton ships and reduce the total fleet tonnage to 30,001 tons)

[Kraut]

39 minutes ago, brothermunro said:

The scrap limit checks the total fleet tonnage against the value you set in Params. If the fleet tonnage is larger than the scrap limit then the ai is allowed to scrap ships. So in vanilla if the AI has a fleet of 50,001 tons it can scrap ships, the game doesn’t seem to check in between each ship being scrapped it all happens at once. (So for example the ai could scrap 2 10,000 ton ships and reduce the total fleet tonnage to 30,001 tons)

thats really strange though... i never experienced those scrapping problems while playing vanilla. it was the opposite; vanilla fleetz were seemingly growing endlessly until war among computer nations or with me reduced the numbers once in a while.

since my last posts i clicked a few more turns und the pc nations continue to scraping and discarding ships(-designs) that just reached 4 years of age, sometimes they reach some more years, but never 10. 

Only Britain, wich i almost reduced to ashes pretty early on increased it ship numbers to a siziable navy again. ill have an eye on them to see when they start to scrap their first ships again.

[daniel1212]

do you know the meaning of this?

[XerMGGW-2]

11 hours ago, Kraut said:

thats really strange though... i never experienced those scrapping problems while playing vanilla. it was the opposite; vanilla fleetz were seemingly growing endlessly until war among computer nations or with me reduced the numbers once in a while.

since my last posts i clicked a few more turns und the pc nations continue to scraping and discarding ships(-designs) that just reached 4 years of age, sometimes they reach some more years, but never 10. 

Only Britain, wich i almost reduced to ashes pretty early on increased it ship numbers to a siziable navy again. ill have an eye on them to see when they start to scrap their first ships again.

...Which is why I didn't touch this much based on how it worked in vanilla.
The primary reason I touched this anyway is because countries were made to be no longer filthy rich, average fleet tonnage expected to decrease.

Edited June 21 by XerMGGW-2

[o Barão]

On 6/19/2024 at 6:41 PM, daniel1212 said:

do you know the reason for this i did everything right 

 

 

4 hours ago, daniel1212 said:

do you know the meaning of this?

The first one seems to be compatibility issues. *The mod is not updated to the latest UAD version.

 

The second happens when resource.assets is not in the right place or it can be a graphic issue.

 

I should have some time to update today. 

[Kraut]

On 6/19/2024 at 8:37 PM, DougToss said:

I think it's just that torpedo accuracy is greater than it ever was. Reading up on capital ship torpedo tubes, people thought they would pose a danger, the British assumed the German High Seas Fleet would rapidly close to 4000m and fire torpedoes, it was part of the reason for the all-big-gun battleship, but it seems like torpedo accuracy was historically just not very good. In the game, even the earliest torpedoes can hit, hit hard, and hit often. 

Yeah, the accurracy seems to be the issue, since the ranges are kinda ok, if we totally ignore the fact, that torpeodes travel well beyond their max. firing range 😛 

Either the Torp range should be set to what is indicated in game or it should be halved. Or a combination of both. 

Im sure the issue was mentioned already multiple times(maybe even by myself) towards the vanilla version and devs as well, dunno why its still like that. 🤷‍♂️

Especially the underwater torpedo tubes you mentioned had a pinpoint laser like accuraccy in my recent memory, but that was in the last patch. Atm most British designs use fast torps so they rarely are able to fire them. 

[Pappystein]

On 6/19/2024 at 2:37 PM, DougToss said:

I think it's just that torpedo accuracy is greater than it ever was. Reading up on capital ship torpedo tubes, people thought they would pose a danger, the British assumed the German High Seas Fleet would rapidly close to 4000m and fire torpedoes, it was part of the reason for the all-big-gun battleship, but it seems like torpedo accuracy was historically just not very good. In the game, even the earliest torpedoes can hit, hit hard, and hit often. 

I haven't played since the latest updates of NAR or UAD.  But, but when I stopped playing a month and a half ago I was still plagued with torpedoes that would veer off constantly RIGHT BEFORE hitting the enemy ships.  Like the ships had a bubble around them.   YES torpedo are deadly.   And yes a Salvo should get one hit (of say 4) 33% of the time at median range.   At max range it should be 0.01% hit.   *pulls out Command At Sea Rule book*   Close range Torpedo going to wrek.   So to be clear, My experience is that Torpedoes suck to be hit by, And yes Destroyer screens are good.  

I would say my experience in the WWI to WWII era of torpedoes is similar to what is laid out in Command at Sea (a TT Naval strategy/mini game for those un-aware) 

[LongJohnSilver]

On 6/19/2024 at 11:41 PM, daniel1212 said:

do you know the reason for this i did everything right 

 

I've been trying to tweek the partmodels file myself to have fun... well it's been quite bad... I remember a few months ago modifying this file wasn't that hard.
I don't know why, but for the exact same kind of modification (Ex : scale modification, model change, ...) it will work on some lines, and won't on some others... I tried to find a logical reason to that, but can't find any!

EX :
I can modify the models and scales of the first and second guns, but cannot on the third gun of this line : 
gun_16_x2_france,,406,gun_16_x2,france,,hood_gun_380_x2,1.17,1.21,1.1,0.9372,hood_gun_380_x2,1.17,1.21,1.1,0.9372,richelieu_gun_380_x2,1.05,1.07,1.27,0.89,richelieu_gun_380_x2,1.05,1.07,1.27,0.89,richelieu_gun_380_x2,1.05,1.07,1.27,0.89,,,,,,,,,,

See highlited the modified part of the line. the game will launch as it is now, but if I try to modify after that part, the game will fail to launch, it's like it has a mind of his own :')

@o Barao , did this ever happened to you while modding the game?

[Lucky Kadono]

i have the same problem trying to edit the parts model file every time i try to change the 18 to 20 inch gun mk3 above to only use the reagular yamato gun model like the mk 2 and not the B model its crashes when i start the game

[DougToss]

AI ships are hilariously overgunned. They're building DDs with 3 5 inch guns in 1903. 

Is there a way to nudge the AI towards realistic and era appropriate designs while still allowing a dedicated player to dedicate resources to researching ahead - with the penalties to research in general that accompany it - and freedom for players to see why 5 inch guns before quick firing would be a terrible armament on the open deck of a 500 tonne destroyer? 

I suppose, I'm asking, is there a way for a player to experiment to discover why certain configurations weren't used at certain dates, while the AI designs conservatively? 

e: I cannot make sense of this aft deck armour for the life of me. 

Edited Saturday at 09:58 PM by DougToss

[SpardaSon21]

9 hours ago, DougToss said:

e: I cannot make sense of this aft deck armour for the life of me. 

What do you mean?  Its perfectly optimized for the AI's typical strategy of bravely running away like Sir Robin.

Edited Sunday at 04:43 AM by SpardaSon21

[o Barão]

BETA v11.4 "updated"- N.A.R. changelog:

• Updated to UAD 1.5.1.6
• All ship hull speed checked to be inside the class maximum limit. This should prevent the rare issue of the AI designing ships with unrealistic speed, well, I hope.

Ships classes maximum speed in NAR:

BB - 35

BC - 37

CA - 39

CL - 41

DD - 45

TB - 43

[daniel1212]

18 minutes ago, o Barão said:

BETA v11.4 "updated"- N.A.R. changelog:

• Updated to UAD 1.5.1.6
• All ship hull speed checked to be inside the class maximum limit. This should prevent the rare issue of the AI designing ships with unrealistic speed, well, I hope.

Ships classes maximum speed in NAR:

BB - 35

BC - 37

CA - 39

CL - 41

DD - 45

TB - 43

can you give me the link for the latest update of the mod thanks

 

[o Barão]

11 hours ago, daniel1212 said:

can you give me the link for the latest update of the mod thanks

 

You have the link in the mod description, in the forum 1st page.

[DougToss]

Is there a way to limit what parts certain ships use? It makes no sense for a merchantman in 1907 to not only have turbine engines (remember Liberty Ships used triple-expansion steam engines, and it wasn't until the Victory Ships that turbines were used), and state of the art gunnery equipment (rather than the obsolete guns and mountings used throughout history to arm merchants) when even newly built warships lack those fittings at this date. 

 

I realize this may be something that needs to be changed in the base game and not a mod, but it stood out to me as glaring. 

[NathanKell]

6 hours ago, DougToss said:

Is there a way to limit what parts certain ships use? It makes no sense for a merchantman in 1907 to not only have turbine engines (remember Liberty Ships used triple-expansion steam engines, and it wasn't until the Victory Ships that turbines were used), and state of the art gunnery equipment (rather than the obsolete guns and mountings used throughout history to arm merchants) when even newly built warships lack those fittings at this date. 

<>

 

I realize this may be something that needs to be changed in the base game and not a mod, but it stood out to me as glaring. 

That needs code. Components have a limit selection of things they can need--another component, the ship having a part of a given type (gun/funnel/tower_main/etc), having armor > certain amount, etc. Not shiptype and not hull name.

[o Barão]

An important question for the players.

A few updates ago I set all sub battles as "important", so in theory the players are forced to fight them. 

A-Is this working properly? Yes or no.

This is important to add minelaying subs to the mod since is the only way to make them balanced.

If yes, then I can consider adding minelaying subs to the mod. I personally dislike the mines mechanic but if the players want I will add them to the mod.

 

B-Do you would like to see minelaying subs in the mod. Yes or no?

[brothermunro]

On 6/25/2024 at 7:16 AM, NathanKell said:

That needs code. Components have a limit selection of things they can need--another component, the ship having a part of a given type (gun/funnel/tower_main/etc), having armor > certain amount, etc. Not shiptype and not hull name.

Yup! The only way to affect component choice is to mess with the ‘weights’ in components but this affects all ship types equally. There’s no way to tell transports to follow different rules in the text files so sadly beyond modders.

[Kraut]

3 hours ago, o Barão said:

An important question for the players.

A few updates ago I set all sub battles as "important", so in theory the players are forced to fight them. 

A-Is this working properly? Yes or no.

This is important to add minelaying subs to the mod since is the only way to make them balanced.

If yes, then I can consider adding minelaying subs to the mod. I personally dislike the mines mechanic but if the players want I will add them to the mod.

 

B-Do you would like to see minelaying subs in the mod. Yes or no?

A - yes, it works for me 

To my mild annoyance though. There is a Time period it seems in the early twenties were Subs are way to elusive and doing to much dmg before Sonar is introduced to Destroyers. I accept dmg to my Capital Ships, although i guard them with a ratio of 1:2 Destroyers und usually ship around in Flottillas with 8-10 DDs. But the Subs were constantly Sinking Capital Ships within one Encounter without even getting dmged themselves. My ships survived more 22-inch Torpedo-Hits than those Subs could carry in total. Let alone just one Sub. So from my recent Experience, i think Sub Dmg / Evavsion should be revisited. 

And since its fitting, why no Hydrophones on Capitals or CAs anymore? 

Another Topic but same EQ Area. I think Scout Planes are a Great Addition, but they shouldnt give Aiming bonusses or if, just small ones, since that would require ships kinda to keep them constantly in the Air wich would require frequent holds to take on or resupply the plane / switch the Pilots. A Practice which would greatly increase the Risk of getting hit by Torps from randomly lurking Subs. Also would especially the early planes not have enough flight time to Explore and / or stay up during a Battle.

B - im indifferent bout Minelying subs. Why not. Mines were always important and very dangerous, so it adds some flair to the Strategic Level, wich is still very shallow. 

 

I also continued my Observations regarding the Scrapping and it stays the same. Im at 26 now. The Brits started to scrap their rebuild fleet at around 24, starting again with ships in the Age-Range of 4-6 Years. 

I also observed alot of disgarding of Refit-Designs in the Same year their were made. Probably because the Original Ship reached its age of 4 years, cause thats usually the Age of ships wich get their Refit-Designs discarded.

But atleast the US managed to start and finish some refits, so there is hope. 

 

 

[NathanKell]

5 hours ago, brothermunro said:

Yup! The only way to affect component choice is to mess with the ‘weights’ in components but this affects all ship types equally. There’s no way to tell transports to follow different rules in the text files so sadly beyond modders.

Ok, fine, I give up. I'm gonna make a minimal code mod just to fix some of the obvious glaring issues. Like this, and like how shared designs are so picky (I'll make it so it'll use any shared design that is buildable, and if tech is newer than the ship's tech, it does minimal upgrading to take advantage maybe?), and whatever other low-hanging fruit y'all want (cc @o Barão ). Because I'm tired of seeing you guys stuck on these limitations.